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Trump's Long History With Conspiracy Theories - FactCheck.org

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During a on Oct. 15, NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie President Donald Trump on his sharing of a&nbsp; that accused his election rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, of murder.The theory, which has in fact, specifically claimed Biden had members of SEAL Team 6 killed to cover up a purportedly failed assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Trump retweeted a post spreading the theory, therefore amplifying the message to his 87 million followers.Trump defended the post by arguing it was simply “a retweet” of someone’s “opinion.” He added, “I’ll put it out there, and people can decide for themselves.” But internet conspiracy theorists, as we , took it as the president’s confirmation of the “intel.”At the same event, Trump also to condemn QAnon — the widespread conspiracy theory movement that Trump is dismantling an elite child sex trafficking ring involving high-profile Democrats. He he knows “nothing about” it.Guthrie, Oct. 15: Let me ask you about QAnon — it is this theory that Democrats are a satanic pedophile ring and that you are the savior of that. Now can you just once and for all state that that is completely not true and disavow QAnon in its entirety?Trump: I know nothing about QAnon. I know very little … I do know they are very much against pedophilia.An has described the theory as one that presents a potential domestic terror threat. And in addition to Guthrie describing the theory’s main tenets in posing the question, a reporter also Trump of its main gist in August when questioning him on it.Trump’s responses spoke to what is a yearslong pattern of Trump directly espousing or leaning into conspiracy theories, often those that smear his political opponents or critics.Here, we summarize some of the conspiracy theories that Trump has either explicitly pushed or subtly elevated both before and during his time in the White House — many of which we’ve covered at length before.False Birther ConspiracyPresident Barack Obama was born in Hawaii — a fact in multiple ways, including when our staffers physically saw and photographed tStill, a conspiracy theory claiming the first Black president was not born in the U.S. persisted long after the 2008 campaign. Trump himself continued to repeatedly promote the claim years after it was definitively debunked.The future president peddled the false claim in in 2011, for example, as well as in a 2012 in which he claimed to have an “extremely credible source” telling him that the birth certificate was a “fraud.” It was not a fraud.For more, see ““ISIS and ObamaIn 2016, months before the presidential election, Trump falsely suggested that Obama had supported ISIS terrorists. He was also wrong when he claimed that a conservative website’s story — which misinterpreted an intelligence memo — proved him “right.”For more, see “.”&nbsp;Ted Cruz’s Father and JFK’s AssassinationVying for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Trump in a May 2016 national interview baselessly linked the father of his competitor, Sen. Ted Cruz, to the man who President John F. Kennedy.“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being, you know, shot,” Trump said. “I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What — what is this right, prior to his being shot. And nobody even brings it up.”The claim was premised on a thinly sourced story in the tabloid National Enquirer about a picture taken months before the assassination. A photo expert told the Enquirer that a man standing next to Oswald .For more, see “.”Questioning Cruz’s EligibilityTrump made a dim reprisal of his “birther” message in 2016. This time it was aimed at Cruz.Trump claimed in January 2016 thatCruz, in Canada to a mother who was an American citizen, was one of several candidates .The objection, which had been filed by , was rejected.As in 2015, citizen by birthFor more, see “.”Celebration in New Jersey on 9/11In 2015, Trump claimed that he “watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering. So something’s going on. We’ve got to find out what it is.”The next day, he claimed, “It did happen. I saw it. It was on television. I saw it. There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down.”But multiple efforts to verify his story turned up zero evidenceFor more, see “,'” and “.”Scarborough Smearrepeatedly has amplified a debunked theory linking MSNBC host Joe Scarborough to the death of one of his staffers in 2001, when he was a Republican congressman. The medical examinerthat the death was accidental, due to a heart problem that caused the aide to fall and hit her head on a desk.In 2017, Trump on Twitter whether Scarborough, a Trump critic, should be fired “In May, Trump again to the subject — — asking for a reopening of the “The president’s tweet prompted a response from the late staffer’s widower, who to Twitter’s CEO asking for the tweets to be taken down, saying that such misinformation“For more, see “.”&nbsp;Misrepresenting COVID-19 DeathsTrump boosted a falsehood that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had “quietly” reduced the COVID-19 death toll to just 6% of what had previously been reported.Trump the claim from an account that promotes QAnon on Aug. 30 and then reiterated the claim in an &nbsp;that aired Sept. 1.But, as we , there was no change in the number of deaths reported by the CDC. Rather, that was a serious misrepresentation of a CDC detailing the other conditions that were present in patients who died with COVID-19.For more, see “.”Biden and SEAL Team 6As we noted earlier, Trump retweeted a conspiracy theory with the completely baseless suggestion that Biden had members of SEAL Team 6 killed to cover up a purportedly failed assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011.We found supporting the theory’s outrageous claims, which were promoted three weeks before the 2020 election at a conservative political conference held at Trump National Doral in Florida.Yet conspiracy theorists took Trump’s amplification to be confirmation. One popular post said that Trump “confirms” the “intel” that Biden “directly participated in a plot to have #SEALTeam6 MURDERED, then arranged a massive cash deal as part of a cover up.”For more, see “.”&nbsp;When a 75-year-old man, Martin Gugino, was hospitalized after being pushed by police during a protest in June, Trump the man may have been an “ANTIFA provocateur” trying to “black out” police equipment. Antifa is anTrump’s tweet appeared to be based on an unreliable website’s story about the encounter.A criminal justice researcher who assessed the video of the encounter told us there was nothing suggesting Gugino was trying to block police communication and that the object in his hands “looks nothing like a hand-held frequency scannerGugino’s lawyer told us he was holding his cell phone.For more, see “.”&nbsp;Biden and ‘the Dark Shadows’In an August with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, Trump cast suspicion on Biden by saying he is controlled by “people that you’ve never heard of. People that are in the dark shadows.”Ingraham asked, “What does that mean? That sounds like conspiracy theory. Dark shadows, what is that?”Trump responded by referring to “&nbsp;who are “He then told a story about a plane that was “almost completely loaded with thugs wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms with gear” and later said they “were on the plane to do big damage.”He declined to elaborate to Ingraham, saying “Some&nbsp; pointed out that his story was similar to, albeit more sensational than, an account offered by Rep. Devin Nunes, who Breitbart about flying on a plane from Salt Lake City on which he “saw maybe two dozen [Black Lives Matter] people” heading to D.C.A day after Trump’s interview with Ingraham, though, he changed the direction of the plane, saying “the looters, the anarchists, the rioters” had boarded a plane “going from Washington to wherever.”For more, see “.”Scalia’s DeathAbout seven months before the 2016 election, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was in his bed on a hunting trip in Texas. Scalia, 79, coronary artery disease, obesity and diabetes, among other ailments. There were of foul play.But an early from John Poindexter, the owner of the ranch where Scalia died,&nbsp;Speculation began to grow that Scalia may have been murdered, and conservative commentator Michael Savage was among those making that suggestion.As a guest on Savage’s radio show, Trump — who was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination then — &nbsp;that he didn’t know the details, “But they say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow.”Poindexter&nbsp; the next day that Scalia “had a pillow over his head, not over his face as some have been saying.” He told CNN, “The pillow was against the headboard and over his head when he was discovered. He looked like someone who had had a restful night’s sleep. There was no evidence of anything else.”Vince FosterDuring the 2016 election, Trump rekindled an old conspiracy theory about his opponent, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, when he said he thought the death of Vince Foster was “fishy.”In reality, Foster, who had worked with Clinton as a lawyer in Arkansas and was a deputy in the White House counsel’s office during the Clinton administration, in a Northern Virginia park in 1993. Before his death, he had he was depressed and seeking help.Five — two by law enforcement, two congressional inquiries and an investigation led by independent counsel Ken Starr —&nbsp;&nbsp;that Foster died by suicide.Still, though, Foster isIn a 2016 Washington Post , Trump called Foster’s death “Epstein and the ClintonsAfter the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in federal prison in 2019, a medical examiner that Epstein committed suicide by hanging himself. But many homed in on Epstein’s connections to former President Bill Clinton and suggested Epstein was actually killed as part of a cover-up. Other theories argued that Trump, who also had ties to Epstein, was behind it.Trump for his part a post suggesting that the Clintons were somehow responsible for Epstein’s death. The tweet used the hashtag “The president later his action, emphasizing that it was a “retweet” and that it came from a “highly respected, conservative pundit” and “big Trump fan.” But he also said he had “no idea” if the Clintons were involved.For more, see “.”&nbsp;DNC ServerTrump the false assertion that Ukraine, or a “Ukrainian company,” had the server of the Democratic National Committee — part of a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election.TIn September 2019, Tom Bossert, the administration’s former homeland security adviser,t’s not only a conspiracy theory, it is completely debunked.”For more, see “.”HydroxychloroquineTrump has the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for COVID-19, althoughA month after the FDA’s announcement, though, Trump waded into conspiracy theories about the drug. He a dubious video making the that hydroxychloroquine was a “cure” for COVID-19, and, in a flurry of about the video, Trump retweeted a that said the drug “is being suppressed to keep deaths high so the economy can be shut down ahead of the election.”There is no evidence to support the idea that anyone is conspiring to “suppress” hydroxychloroquine in order to harm the economy for political gain. Rather, there is substantial evidence suggesting that the drug is for treating COVID-19.For more, see “This fact check is available at IFCN’s 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Clickfor more.Ask FactCheckHave a question?

During a on Oct. 15, NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie President Donald Trump on his sharing of a&nbsp; that accused his election rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, of murder.The theory, which has in fact, specifically claimed Biden had members of SEAL Team 6 killed to cover up a purportedly failed assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Trump retweeted a post spreading the theory, therefore amplifying the message to his 87 million followers.Trump defended the post by arguing it was simply “a retweet” of someone’s “opinion.” He added, “I’ll put it out there, and people can decide for...

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